Habitual Offenders: A True Tale of Nuns, Prostitutes, and Murderers in Seventeenth-Century Italy

By Craig A. Monson

“An enthralling amalgam of sex, violence, and scholarship. At the center of the story are the abduction and murder of two reformed prostitute nuns” (Frederick Hammond, Music and Spectacle in Baroque Rome).
 
In April 1644, two nuns fled Bologna’s convent for reformed prostitutes. A perfunctory archiepiscopal investigation went nowhere, and the nuns were quickly forgotten. By June of the next year, however, an overwhelming stench drew a woman to the wine cellar of her Bolognese townhouse, reopened after a two-year absence—where to her horror she discovered the eerily intact, garroted corpses of the two missing women.
 
Drawing on over four thousand pages of primary sources, the intrepid Craig A. Monson reconstructs this fascinating history of crime and punishment in seventeenth-century Italy. Along the way, he explores Italy’s back streets and back stairs, giving us access to voices we rarely encounter in conventional histories: prostitutes and maidservants, mercenaries and bandits, along with other “dubious” figures negotiating the boundaries of polite society. Painstakingly researched and breathlessly told, Habitual Offenders will delight historians and true-crime fans alike.
 
“Monson’s combination of style and substance makes this a thoroughly engaging work to read. His ability to move from the smallest of significant objects, silver-handled forks and scarlet jackets, to examine the struggles for power between the Pope and Europe’s most powerful families is notable, resulting in a work highly enjoyable for academic and lay readers alike.” —Women’s History
 
“Monson delivers cut-to-the-quick truths about survival strategies for individuals and families, both great and small, caught in networks from Bologna, through Venice and papal Rome, reaching as far as Mazarin and the king of France.” —Alison K. Frazier, author of Possible Lives: Authors and Saints in Renaissance Italy

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: May 3, 2016
• ISBN: 9780226335476

Book preview

Habitual Offenders

Habitual Offenders

— A True Tale of —

Nuns, Prostitutes, and Murderers in Seventeenth-Century Italy

Craig A. Monson

The University of Chicago Press

Chicago and London

Craig A. Monson is the Paul Tietjens Professor Emeritus of Music at Washington University in St. Louis and the author of Nuns Behaving Badly and Divas in the Convent, also published by the University of Chicago Press. He lives in St. Louis.

The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637

The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London

© 2016 by The University of Chicago

All rights reserved. Published 2016.

Printed in the United States of America

25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 1 2 3 4 5

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-33533-9 (cloth)

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-33547-6 (e-book)

DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226335476.001.0001

Part opening illustrations (pages 17, 143, and 183) are details from figures 14, 23, and 3, respectively. See the figure captions on pages 57, 181, and 12 for full source information.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Monson, Craig (Craig A.), author.

Title: Habitual offenders : a true tale of nuns, prostitutes, and murderers in seventeenth-century Italy / Craig A. Monson.

Description: Chicago ; London : University of Chicago Press, 2016 | © 2016 | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015039579 | ISBN 9780226335339 (cloth : alkaline paper) | ISBN 9780226335476 (e-book)

Subjects: LCSH: Murder—Italy—History—17th century. | Nuns—Crimes against—Italy—Bologna. | Criminal Justice, Administration of—Italy—History—17th century.

Classification: LCC HV6535.I83 B658 2016 | DDC 364.152/30945411—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015039579

♾ This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992 (Permanence of Paper).

Contents

List of Figures

Acknowledgments

Cast of Characters

Timeline

Introduction

Bologna

1. Airing Dirty Linen

2. A Tale of Two Sisters

3. The Soldier of Misfortune and the Tailor’s Son

4. A Grave Mistake

5. Pas devant les Domestiques

6. Novus Homo

7. Light at the Top of the Stairs

Rome

8. Dragnet

9. Cat and Mouse Games

10. Home Court Advantage

Bologna

11. In This Town They’re All Malicious Liars!

12. I Don’t Know This Suor Laura Vittoria!

13. Se Sarà Fatto Pamphilio / I Barberini Andrano in Esilio

14. A Few Days in Jail for Love of Me

15. Return to the Scene of the Crime

16. A Gentleman Never Tells

17. Unfinished Business

Epilogue

Abbreviations

Notes

Selected Bibliography

Index

Figures

1. Rome, Archivio di Stato, the bound transcript of the case of the murdered convertite (present day)

2. The Convent of SS. Filippo e Giacomo delle Convertite and its environs (1702)

3. Cardinal Antonio Barberini (1643)

4. Map of the Papal States and northern Italy

5. Joan Blaeu, Theatrum civitatum et admirandorum Italiae (1663)

6. Love letter from Desiderio Desiderato, discovered in La Generona’s cell (1644)

7. Bologna, voltone dei Caccianemici, where La Rossa was last seen alive (present day)

8. Bologna, via delle Tovaglie, where La Rossa grew up (present day)

9. Mitelli, La vita infelice della meretrice (1692)

10. Bologna, Piazza San Salvatore, the parish of La Generona’s keeper (present day)

11. Passerotti, Crucifixion with Saints Philip, James, and Mary Magdalene, from the high altar of the Convertite (late sixteenth century)

12. Record of Cornelia Pasi’s acceptance and clothing ceremony at the Convertite (1632)

13. Record of Gentile Regi’s acceptance at the Convertite (1641)

14. A seventeenth-century convertita ironing linens at the Convertite

15. Castello di Gorlago, where Donato Guarnieri grew up (present day)

16. Remains of the palace at Copparo, where Guarnieri, Carlo Possenti, and Ferdinando Ranuzzi bivouacked during Holy Week in 1644 (present day)

17. Possenti, L’amicizia di Venere con Diana (1638)

18. Bologna, Palazzo Pepoli Vecchio, the nuns’ second hideout (present day)

19. Bologna, Palazzo del Legato, Camera degli Cavaglieri, where Giovanni Braccesi presided (present day)

20. Bologna, Palazzo Fava, where Braccesi resided (present day)

21. Carlo Raguzzi’s incriminating letter to Carlo Possenti (1645)

22. Veduta di strada Maggiore, showing Giandomenico Rossi’s residence and the nuns’ first hideout, near Porta Maggiore (1784)

23. Bologna, the Torrone in the eighteenth century

24. Bologna, the Torrone today

25. The torture known as the strappado (early sixteenth century)

26. The torture known as the vigil (veglia) (1675)

27. Sambuca Pistoiese, the Grand Duke of Tuscany’s customs house (present day)

28. Bologna, via Santo Stefano, opposite the Baraccano, where the nuns’ bodies were discovered (present day)

29. Bologna, Church of the Convertite as it looks today

Acknowledgments

The re-creation of this story would have been impossible without access to many archives and libraries and without the generous assistance and patience of their staffs: in Rome, the Archivio di Stato, Archivio Storico Capitolino, and Biblioteca Cassanatense; in Vatican City, the Archivio Segreto Vaticano and Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana; in Bologna, the Archivio di Stato, Biblioteca Comunale dell’Archiginnasio, Archivio Generale Arcivescovile, Biblioteca Universitaria, and Biblioteca Arte e Storia San Giorgio in Poggiale; in Modena, the Archivio di Stato; in Florence, the Archivio di Stato; in Venice, the Archivio di Stato; in Paris, the Archives Diplomatiques du Ministère des Affaires Étrangères; in Princeton, New Jersey, the Marquand Library; in Austin, Texas, the Harry Ransom Research Center. I am, as always, especially indebted to the library system of Washington University in St. Louis and its interlibrary loan department.

The research was made possible by generous support from Washington University, a Paul Oskar Kristeller Memorial Research Grant from the Renaissance Society of America, and a travel stipend to the Harry Ransom Research Center at the University of Texas, supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Research Fellowship Endowment.

Jane Bernstein, Lucia Marchi, Dolores Pesce, Anne Schutte, Steve Smith, Carolyn Valone, and Elissa Weaver all read the entire draft and offered extensive suggestions for its improvement, as did the University of Chicago Press’s anonymous readers. Lucia Marchi scrutinized my Italian and Latin translations and shared many fruitful discussions of possible literal and implicit meanings of thorny passages. Antonia Banducci, Liza Dister, Shannon McHugh, Anne Schutte, and Riccardo James Vargiu tracked down elusive sources and acquired copies for me. Emanuela and Maria Teresa Gozzini warmly welcomed me to Castello di Gorlago (home of Donato and Alessandro Guarnieri and their family), offered generous hospitality, and shared their family history.

I also thank Randy Petilos and the staff of the University of Chicago Press, Alice Bennett, Erin DeWitt, Natalie F. Smith, Kevin Quach, Joan Davies, and James Adcox, for their willingness to take on another of my projects.

The many others who liberally offered help and advice include Francesco Cifarelli, Federica Colaiacomo, Kaye Coveney, Robert Kendrick, Jim Ladewig, Tomaso Montanari, Margaret Murata, Colleen Reardon, Luca Salvucci, Milena Schaller, Michael Scherberg, Gianvittorio Signorotto, Chiara Sirk, Candace Smith, Simone Testa, Betha Whitlow, and Gabriella Zarri. •

Cast of Characters

Primary characters are marked with asterisks; secondary characters are in italics; ancillary characters are in roman type.

Agosti, Ottavio. Donato Guarnieri’s cousin, who came to his aid in Venice and Bologna

Albergati-Ludovisi, Cardinal Niccolò (1608–87). Bolognese archbishop, 1645–51

Arnaldi, Monsignor Alfonso. Bolognese archiepiscopal auditor for criminal matters, 1644–45

Barberini, Cardinal Antonio (1607–71). Youngest nephew of Urban VIII, brother of Francesco and Taddeo, Bolognese papal legate during the abduction of the convertite

Barberini, Cardinal Francesco (1597–1679). Oldest nephew of Urban VIII, brother of Taddeo and Antonio, cardinal nephew under Urban VIII

Barberini, Maffeo. See Urban VIII

Barberini, Prince Taddeo (1603–47). Nephew of Urban VIII, brother of Francesco and Antonio, father of Carlo

Bertolotti, Taddea. Servant and nurse of Count Alessandro Maria Pepoli

*Braccesi, Giovanni (d. 1685). Antonio Barberini’s secretary of briefs, accused in the abduction and murder of the fugitive convertite

Conti, Suor Lucina. Prioress of the Convertite, 1644

Dioni, Suor Eufrasia Maria. Conversa at the Convertite; La Generona and La Rossa’s personal servant

Falconieri, Cardinal Lelio (1585–1648). Bolognese papal legate, 1644–48

Galeazzo, alias Monchino (d. 1644). La Rossa’s servant in the world and subsequently her convent messenger

Galliani, Bartolomea. Possenti family servant

Guarnieri, Colonel Alessandro. Older brother of Donato; implicated in the abduction and murder of the convertite

*Guarnieri, Captain Donato (b. ca. 1620–27). Brother of Alessandro; captain in the papal army during the War of Castro; accused in the abduction of the convertite

Innocent X (1574–1655). Giovanni Battista Pamphili, reigned as pope 1644–55

Lomellini, Cardinal Girolamo (1607–59). Governor of Rome during the case of the convertite

Machiavelli, Sergeant Major Benedetto. Sometime governor of the Fortezza Lagoscuro; befriended Donato Guarnieri in Ferrara and Copparo in March 1644

Machiavelli, Isabella dall’Aglio. Sister of Dionisio Tomassini, mother of Francesco dall’Aglio, aunt of Diana and Domenica Tomassini; owner of the house on via Santo Stefano where the nuns’ bodies were discovered

Malvasia, Marchese Cornelio (1603–64). General of the papal army during the War of Castro; Carlo Possenti’s patron

Mariani, Galeazzo. Former soldier, acquaintance of Ferdinando Ranuzzi and Carlo Possenti; scarred by Possenti in March 1644

Mazarin, Cardinal Jules (1602–61). Prime minister of France, sometime ally of the Barberini family

Negrini, Negrino. Accomplice of Ferdinando Ranuzzi, implicated in the abduction of the convertite

Pallada, Andrea. Carlo Possenti’s friend, who provided the convertite’s first hideout

Pallada, Doralice. Wife of Andrea

Pamphili, Cardinal Camillo Francesco (1622–66). Son of Olimpia Maidalchini, cardinal nephew of Pope Innocent X, 1644–47

Pamphili, Giovanni Battista. See Innocent X

Panzacchi, Federico. Friend and confidant of Andrea Pallada

Pasi, Catterina (b. 1630). Daughter of Suor Silveria Catterina and Antonio Giovannoni

*Pasi, Suor Silveria Catterina, known as La Generona (1604–44) (Cornelia in the world). One of the convertite who fled the convent on April 1, 1644; subsequently murdered

Pepoli, Count Alessandro Maria (1617–44). Provided the convertite’s second hideout

*Possenti, Carlo (1613–46). Canon of Santa Maria Maggiore in Bologna, chaplain general of the papal army during the War of Castro, vice duke of Segni; accused in the abduction of the convertite

Ragazzi, Giulia, known as La Fratina. Favorite prostitute of Donato Guarnieri

Raguzzi, Carlo. Army friend of Alessandro and Donato Guarnieri and Carlo Possenti

Ranuzzi, Count Ferdinando (1622–46). Implicated in the abduction of the convertite

Regi, Giustina (b. 1616). Sister of Suor Laura Vittoria, daughter of Lucrezia

*Regi, Suor Laura Vittoria, known as La Rossa (1614–44) (Gentile in the world). Daughter of Lucrezia, sister of Giustina; one of the convertite who fled the convent on April 1, 1644; subsequently murdered

Regi, Lucrezia. Mother of La Rossa and Giustina

*Rossi, Giovanni Domenico or Giandomenico (1598–1674). Lieutenant governor of Rome, prosecutor in the case of the fugitive convertite

Santi, Giulia. Housekeeper of Count Alessandro Maria Pepoli

Tomassini, Diana. Daughter of Dionisio, sister of Domenica, niece of Isabella Machiavelli; lover of Count Alessandro Maria Pepoli

Tomassini, Dionisio. Father of Diana and Domenica, brother of Isabella Machiavelli; maggiordomo of Count Alessandro Maria Pepoli

Tomassini, Domenica. Daughter of Dionisio, sister of Diana, niece of Isabella Machiavelli; lover of Count Alessandro Maria Pepoli

Urban VIII (1568–1644). Maffeo Barberini, uncle of Francesco, Taddeo, and Antonio; reigned as pope, 1623–44

Timeline

— 1644 —

THURSDAY, MARCH 17. Papal forces defeated at Lagoscuro, the last battle of the War of Castro

SUNDAY, MARCH 20. Palm Sunday; Donato Guarnieri last spotted at convent of the Convertite

FRIDAY, MARCH 25. Carlo Possenti returns from Ferrara to Bologna for Easter

SUNDAY, MARCH 27. Easter Sunday

TUESDAY, MARCH 29. Carlo Possenti last spotted at Convertite before returning to Ferrara

THURSDAY, MARCH 31. Peace treaty signed in Venice, ending War of Castro

FRIDAY, APRIL 1. Suor Silveria Catterina (La Generona) and Suor Laura Vittoria (La Rossa) abducted from Convertite; taken briefly to Count Ferdinando Ranuzzi’s, then to Andrea Pallada’s apartment on strada Maggiore; discovery of La Generona and La Rossa’s flight from Convertite; archiepiscopal investigation begins

TUESDAY, APRIL 5. Archiepiscopal investigation temporarily halted

SUNDAY, APRIL 10. Feast of Our Lady of Borgo di San Pietro; nuns moved to Count Alessandro Maria’s apartments at Palazzo Pepoli

MONDAY, APRIL 18. Archiepiscopal investigation resumes

FRIDAY, APRIL 22. Nuns removed from Palazzo Pepoli

SATURDAY, APRIL 30. Archiepiscopal investigation abandoned, incomplete

EARLY MAY. Nuns, dressed as men, spotted at Inn of the Torretta in Ferrara

MONDAY, MAY 9. Freak blizzard strikes Bologna

SUNDAY, MAY 15. La Rossa spotted near voltone dei Caccianemici about this time

EARLY JUNE. Guarnieri leaves Bologna for Gorlago

FRIDAY, JULY 29. Urban VIII dies; Possenti moves to Rome with Giovanni Braccesi

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 15. Giovanni Battista Pamphili elected pope, Innocent X

— 1645 —

SUNDAY, APRIL 9. Palm Sunday; Possenti leaves Rome for Segni as vice duke

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 21. Nuns’ bodies discovered at Casa Machiavelli on via Santo Stefano; investigation in Bologna begins

SUNDAY, JUNE 25. Bolognese legate informs Rome of discoveries at Casa Machiavelli

MONDAY, JULY 17. Possenti arrested in Segni

FRIDAY, JULY 21. Giandomenico Rossi first interrogates Possenti in Rome

TUESDAY, JULY 25. Rossi arrests Giovanni Braccesi at Palazzo Barberini in Rome

WEDNESDAY, JULY 26. Rossi first interrogates Braccesi in Rome

FRIDAY, AUGUST 4. Guarnieri arrested in Venice

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 16. Rossi leaves Rome with Possenti and Braccesi, bound for Bologna

FRIDAY, AUGUST 25. Rossi arrives in Bologna with Possenti and Braccesi

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 2. Rossi first interrogates Possenti in Bologna

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 8. Guarnieri leaves Venice in Venetian custody; Rossi first interrogates Braccesi in Bologna

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 12. Guarnieri delivered to Torrone in Bologna; Rossi first interrogates Guarnieri in Bologna

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 14. Possenti’s first confrontations with accusers

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 21. Guarnieri’s first confrontations with accusers

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 28. Cardinal Antonio Barberini flees Rome for France

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 11. Guarnieri confronts nuns at Convertite

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 14. Rossi interrogates Braccesi (first time since September 9)

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 15. Barberini family in Rome received under protection of France

MONDAY, OCTOBER 30. Possenti confronts nuns at Convertite

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 15. Rossi sends transcript of investigation to Rome

— 1646 —

TUESDAY, JANUARY 16. Francesco and Taddeo Barberini flee Rome for France

FRIDAY, JANUARY 26. Rome authorizes torture of Possenti

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 3. Possenti subjected to the strappado

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 4. Possenti subjected to the vigil; dies the following morning

SATURDAY, MARCH 10. Rome passes sentence in the case and authorizes torture of Guarnieri

MONDAY, MAY 21. Rossi interrogates Braccesi (first time since October 23); Braccesi disappears from trial record

SATURDAY, JUNE 2. Guarnieri subjected to the strappado; Guarnieri released from solitary confinement

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 17. Innocent X agrees to reconcile with Barberini family

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 19. Rossi banishes Guarnieri from Papal States

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 20. Guarnieri released at Tuscan border

Introduction

This book came about through the accidental convergence of traditional scholarly method (archival research) and twenty-first-century technological innovation (googling). In the summer of 1989, when I began to explore convent music in Renaissance Bologna, I spent weeks picking through chronicles and diaries, searching for details about nuns’ music. Although such information proved thin in those histories, the documents offered diverting testimony about day-to-day happenings that captured chroniclers’ attention. One June morning, a notice having nothing to do with music found its way it into my notebook. (This was the era when researchers carried pencils and notebooks into archives, not laptops.)

1 April 1644, two nuns fled the convent for reformed prostitutes. Nothing more was known about it. Then on 23 June 1645, their cadavers were discovered in a storeroom under some bundles in the house of Don Carlo Possenti, a canon of Santa Maria Maggiore, almost opposite the Baraccano, and you could see that they had been strangled because they still had the garrotes around their throats.¹

After that I kept an eye open for further references to this fugitive pair, nicknamed La Generona (after an ex-boyfriend, Bernardino Generoni) and La Rossa (after her flagrantly red hair). Rumor had it that these convertite (as reformed prostitute nuns were called in Italy) had been lured from their convent not only by the prominent local priest, Carlo Possenti, but also by Captain Donato Guarnieri, a head-turning young mercenary in the papal army during the War of Castro. Whenever other chronicles yielded details of their crimes, I copied them out, more for diversion than for any other reason, since they had nothing to do with music in convents.

Two decades later, with retirement looming, caught up in some late-life crisis, I took a break from music history and assembled a short collection of similar cases of transgressive convent behavior, Nuns Behaving Badly: Tales of Music, Magic, Art, and Arson in the Convents of Italy (2010). Although La Generona and La Rossa’s story seemed perfect for the book, the scant gleanings from my old notebooks did not add up to a chapter.

By then, of course, I had graduated from pencils and notebooks to the computer. I had also ventured onto the World Wide Web, if not much further than eBay and e-mail. Like my students, I had also discovered Google. Some months after Nuns Behaving Badly appeared, I tried googling Carlo Possenti, the miscreant priest who had allegedly lured Bologna’s fugitive convertite from the cloister. Amid multiple citations about a nineteenth-century Italian engineer and politician of the same name and sites offering me a chance, quite remarkably, to chat and make friends with Possenti, I happened upon Claudio Costantini’s Fazione Urbana: Sbandamento e ricomposizione di una grande clientela a metà seicento.² Buried in this remarkably detailed and exhaustively documented study of papal politics at the time of Popes Urban VIII and Innocent X, I ran across a brief discussion of the case of Bologna’s missing convertite as it related to Innocent X’s persecution of Urban VIII’s nephew, Cardinal Antonio Barberini.

The outrageous misbehavior of two extremely ordinary women in a northern Italian convent had evidently set off a chain of events that reached south to Rome and the papal court and north to France and the court of Louis XIV. Cardinal Antonio Barberini fled Rome, disguised as a barrel maker, to seek asylum in France, followed shortly thereafter by his brother Cardinal Francesco and other family members.

Particularly intriguing, in a footnote Costantini made passing reference to a transcript of the investigation of the crime, surviving in the state archive in Rome,³ which definitely piqued my curiosity. I had not ventured into an Italian archive since the early 1990s, however, before the advent of the euro and before my favorite economical pilgrims’ hotel on the Janiculum Hill had been turned into condominiums. I tried to persuade a friend in Rome to drop by the archive, see what the call number might yield, and order a photocopy of the document if it looked interesting. She firmly pointed out that this was something I really should do myself. Of course she was right.

A few weeks later, I flew to Rome for the first time in eighteen years, checked into a bed-and-breakfast costing three or four times what I paid in 1994, and found my way to the state archive, not far from Piazza Navona. Within the hour a staff member delivered an unwieldy parchment-bound volume more than eight inches thick (fig. 1): 2,200 pages of testimony from more than 180 witnesses. Rather than a chapter, this had the makings of a book. Clearly there was much more material than I could deal with in the three weeks before my return flight. Another technological innovation had come on the scene since my last archival expedition, however: the digital camera. I learned that I could now photograph documents myself. Over four days I photographed the entire manuscript. Once more than 2,200 images were uploaded onto my laptop, I could digitally manipulate them so that impenetrable scribal hands often became legible.

Figure 1. Processo. The bound transcript of the case of the murdered convertite. Courtesy of the Ministero dei Beni e delle Attività Culturali e del Turismo, Rome, ASRM 64/2014 (further reproduction prohibited).

My exploration of other leads over the next two years led to other archives in Rome as well as in Bologna, Florence, Venice, Modena, Paris, and even Austin, Texas. I usually visited the collections myself, but in some cases I managed to cajole colleagues and obliging students into undertaking investigations on my behalf. Thanks to digital imagery, they could send me hundreds of additional pages, until by now the relevant documentary material is approaching 5,000 pages.

What I originally envisioned as a chapter, then as a slim volume with half a dozen chapters, has swelled to seventeen chapters. It recounts happenings from Segni, south of Rome, to Compiègne, north of Paris. This wealth of primary sources permits me to reconstruct an unusually detailed microhistory of crime and punishment in seventeenth-century Bologna, one that puts faces on people of the ordinary sort from Italy’s backstreets and back stairs, seldom encountered in historical narratives. In re-creating the case of the missing convertite, I examine such issues as life strategies among prostitutes, prostitutes turned nuns, maidservants, and other marginal women; self-promotion among new men making their way at the papal court without benefit of exalted birth; and the lives of mercenary soldiers, bandits, and others negotiating the boundaries of respectability. I construct much of the narrative from the viewpoints and in the words of these lesser members of the social order, often barely visible (or audible) in history.

Such ample material illuminates all stages of papal justice, from extrajudicial evidence gathering to tracking down alleged perpetrators, to interrogations of witnesses and their confrontations with the accused, to the uses of torture. It also sheds light on aspects of the judicial process sometimes less apparent in such records. Irene Fosi, Giancarlo Angelozzi, and Cesarina Casanova have pointed out, for example, that often witnesses’ own words in trial transcripts of this period represent notaries’ subsequent refinement, tidying up, and standardizing of what witnesses actually said.⁴ Although some of that occurs here, 70 percent of this transcript appears to be the unredacted original, copied on the spot in the prisons of Bologna and Rome, including autograph affirmations of testimony scrawled in the document after interrogation sessions. It thus offers a plausible representation of what happened at the moment and of who said what in their own words.

Additional documents bound into the record reveal further intriguing aspects of the case. Love letters recovered from La Generona’s cell suggest her ambivalence about her relationship with the possessive young priest for whom she fled. Another incriminating letter, confiscated from Carlo Possenti’s desk at his arrest, becomes an important element in the prosecution’s case and eventually a faintly smoking gun. Mandates for the arrest and detention of persons of interest, from prostitutes to booksellers, chambermaids, and tavern keepers (but very rarely aristocrats), and the record of when and how witnesses were released on bond after weeks or months of detention illuminate the realities of being compelled to testify. Notarial annotations, papal directives, and petitions on behalf of defendants elucidate the uses of torture in a legal case involving unparalleled prosecutorial license: not only to extract confessions and intimidate witnesses, but also to demoralize the accused. They also illustrate the less familiar practice of torturing a star prosecution witness as a means of confirming his accusations, which a defendant had vehemently contested.

Testimony authenticated by being read back and then confirmed by witnesses, face-to-face with the accused, but also preliminary and follow-up interrogations elucidate prosecutorial strategies in interesting ways. In the case of convent testimony, for example, interrogators’ careful leading questions, planted early on, prompted more useful subsequent testimony after the convent gossip mill had continued to grind for several weeks. Other witnesses commonly tailored their truths to suit interrogators’ or (especially) their own interests.

Other sources reflect public opinion as the case proceeds. Among the most interesting, if not always the most reliable, are Roman gossip sheets (avvisi), which disseminated the news of the day, commonly in manuscript copies passed from hand to hand and from scribe to scribe.⁵ Tidbits from avvisi often found their way into ambassadorial dispatches to Venice, Modena, Florence, and Paris. These dispatches convey more detailed, sometimes secret information (quite often in cipher). Occasionally this information derives from well-placed sources: papal intermediaries or even the pope himself. Both avvisi and dispatches shed light on extrajudicial actions undocumented in the investigation’s official transcript. Comparing their information with the trial record also suggests how misinformation leaked at high levels of the papal bureaucracy could mislead or impart a positive spin to public opinion in what was, after all, also a piece of papal political theater.

Private communications, preserved in the Vatican Secret Archive, between Cardinal Camillo Francesco Pamphili, the young papal nephew serving as Innocent X’s right hand, and the archbishop of Bologna, papal legates in Bologna and Ferrara, and the papal nuncio in Venice also take us behind the scenes at the highest levels of the case. They illuminate secret strategies and aid in reconstructing a backstory to the investigation as documented in the official investigative transcript.

It is ironic that the prostitutes turned nuns, whose death provoked this cause célèbre and who should be the main characters in the story, remain among the most frustratingly elusive. In the remnants of the convent archive, preserved in Bologna’s state archive, only a few scraps of information surface to shed light on the lives and characters of La Generona and La Rossa. (In La Rossa’s case, a solitary original convent document confirms that she was ever there at all.) We therefore come to know them chiefly through what family members, former lovers, and scandalized cloistered sisters later chose to reveal (or fabricate) about them. I reconstruct their earlier careers as women of the world against the realities of female poverty and prostitution in seventeenth-century Bologna. Re-creating their subsequent cloistered lives puts faces on the least reputable of convent women, who rarely appear in scholarship on female monasticism, even though most seventeenth-century cities in Italy and other Catholic regions had their convents of convertite.⁶

This account unfolds in much the same way as the official transcript records the judicial discovery process. Readers learn details of the crimes in the sequence in which investigators discovered them. The unfolding therefore is not nicely chronological, since some later offenses came to light before earlier ones. To further complicate the narrative, for a time interrogations were under way in both Bologna and Rome—in Bologna, at both the archiepiscopal court and the rival secular tribunal, the Torrone. In the interest of clarity, a simplified time line appears at the beginning of the book.

At the discovery of these crimes, there was no CSI Bologna ready to ferret out clues using a sophisticated system of forensics. Although physical evidence (letters, clothing, jewelry, furniture) played a part in the case, witness testimony remained the method of proof in its formulation and prosecution. Circumstantial evidence or the testimony of a single eyewitness was insufficient for conviction: conviction and condemnation required the testimony of two eyewitnesses. Perpetrators of these crimes therefore did their best to avoid (or eliminate) eyewitnesses. If partial proof was sufficiently compelling, however, it could justify torture as a means of obtaining a confession.⁷ In the absence of eyewitnesses to the present crimes, prosecutors labored long and hard to establish, through witness testimony, partial proof that was persuasive enough to persuade higher authorities to authorize torture.

Several chapters therefore re-create exchanges between persons of interest and their interrogators. Notaries present at every stage in the case were required to take down witnesses’ responses exactly, distinguishing between information that witnesses volunteered on their own and their answers to the interrogator’s direct questions. In the present case, the notary occasionally notes the witness’s manner of speaking, changes in emotion, and facial expression (something that should always have happened but often did not).⁸ In multiple instances, the prosecutor perceived such changes as important indications of guilt.

My presentation of what was said obviously reinterprets the notaries’ own mediation between interrogators and witnesses. In notaries’ transcripts, witnesses’ statements appear in the vernacular and the first person and almost invariably repeat questions as part of their answers. Prosecutors’ questions and all descriptions of judicial procedure are recorded in Latin and in the third person, often highly abbreviated. Re-creating such questions as direct speech, I have omitted witnesses’ rephrasing of them in their answers. As in modern-day interrogations, questions get asked and answered repeatedly, over days, weeks, and months. I often combine details from a witness’s different answers to the same question (sometimes from different days) into single encounters between interrogator and witness, while indicating the folio numbers for the various responses in the notes. At times I have combined answers to several questions into a single witness response. I have also simplified run-on sentence structure and omitted numerous details that are redundant or irrelevant to my construction of the narrative.

Witnesses often present others’ words as direct quotations; at other times they describe what others said. I often re-create such interchanges as direct speech. When speakers, particularly from nonhegemonic classes, introduce dialect or less refined speech, or if witnesses remark on others’ rough language in describing their words, I occasionally search for ways to differentiate such speech in English. I have preserved witnesses’ highly repetitive, respectful form of addressing the interrogator as my lord, however, since the absence or omission of the phrase can be revealing.

In a hundred days of interrogations spread over two and a half years, almost a hundred persons of interest were called to testify; in addition, eighty nuns were deposed at the convent of the Convertite. Thus, as in any complex legal investigation, the number of names to keep straight is daunting. The difficulty is compounded in this case because names are often very similar (for example, Bolognese nuns’ vicar, Monsignor Ascanio Rinaldi, and Bolognese archiepiscopal criminal auditor, Monsignor Alfonso Arnaldi). That reality is inescapable and irremediable. Readers may perhaps find consolation in the knowledge that the papal nephew and the archbishop of Bologna, both at the center of the case, confused various persons of interest. To simplify matters, very minor players (from stable boys to cardinals) remain nameless in the narrative, their names relegated to the notes. To help readers sort out the others, a cast of characters that distinguishes primary, secondary, and ancillary figures appears at the beginning of the book.

Given my approach to historical narrative (reworking characters’ words, as described above, reimagining their actions based on archival documentation, and suggestively reconstructing the scenes and the nature of those actions),⁹ the detail in the original sources left little need for me to make things up. To clarify how rarely I was left to my own devices, the notes provide some sense of just how much appears in the original. The richness of the primary sources offers fascinating insight into far more aspects of seventeenth-century Bolognese life than could be included here. I try not to indulge myself too far in the detail I include. But one can leave out only so much. For both seventeenth-century investigators and twenty-first-century readers, the devil is in the details.

For any who might be interested in following the wanderings of the nuns and other characters or in discovering where the action took place, I have included GPS coordinates for most locations.

In 1569 La Generona and La Rossa’s Ancient Observance Carmelite convent of SS. Filippo e Giacomo delle Convertite (fig. 2, A) was formally founded at the corner of via delle Lame and via del Rondone in Bologna, after informal peregrinations around the city earlier in the century. It was one of Italy’s many monastic refuges for repentant prostitutes who had saved up enough to pay the requisite dowry. By that date the spirit of Catholic reform had inspired similar institutions from Genoa (1500–1510) to Rome (1520), Palermo (1524), Vicenza (1537), Naples (1538), Messina (1542), and Treviso (1559). Alternative institutions such as Bologna’s Opera dei Poveri Mendicanti (1560) and the Casa del Soccorso (1589) received fallen women or women at risk who could not afford the price of admission to the Convertite.¹⁰

Figure 2 Filippo de’ Gnudi, Disegno dell’alma città di Bologna (1702), detail. A, SS. Filippo e Giacomo delle Convertite; B, via del Rondone; C, via delle Lame; D, Capuchin fields (the surrounding wall was built after the nuns’ flight); E, Riva di Reno canal; F, Canale Navile. Reproduced with permission of the Biblioteca Comunale dell’Archiginnasio, Bologna.

SS. Filippo e Giacomo was home to fifty women by 1574, when the convent took in a very modest £250. (At the opposite extreme, the Clarissan convent of SS. Naborre e Felice took in £8,720 that year.) By 1614 the population of the Convertite had more than doubled to 128, a number that remained constant down to La Generona and La Rossa’s time.¹¹

Although this is not a history of great men, a few play roles at the margins. The story begins in the final months of the papacy of Urban VIII, Maffeo Barberini (1568–1644), who had occupied the throne of Saint Peter since 1623. With Europe at war throughout his reign, Urban struggled to mediate between Spain and its emerging rival, France. In 1635 France declared war on Spain; the conflict lasted until 1659. Concurrently the pope also tried to support the Habsburgs in their ongoing campaigns against the Protestants in the north, which were settled only in 1648, after Urban’s death.

Spain, which controlled the southern half of the Italian peninsula as well as other island and mainland territories, remained the dominant power in Italy. The rest of Italy was fragmented into a number of independent polities, many too weak to maintain true independence: the Papal States, the Venetian Republic, the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, the Duchies of Savoy, Parma, and Modena, and the Republics of Genoa and Lucca. Lesser states struggled to find their own advantage in the balance between Spanish intimidation and French enticement to form alliances against Spain. As Urban VIII once observed, It is certain that in this wretched Italy, if the Spaniards could be driven out, the French would establish their supremacy, which could be worse than the Spaniards’, owing to the fickleness, insatiable greed and capricious nature of that nation.¹²

Violence involving the major powers broke out periodically on Italian soil (for example, the War of Mantuan Succession, 1628–31; the Piedmont Wars, 1639–42, 1647–49, 1655–59; the Neapolitan revolt, 1648). Comparable altercations were acted out in miniature by partisan groups on the streets of Rome, where the local governor struggled to keep order.¹³

Throughout his reign, Urban remained strongly committed to the Church Militant, most notably through his fortifications of Rome and its environs and of Bologna, but also through his pursuit of the War of Castro, which looms large in this story. He also promoted the Church Triumphant through ardent artistic patronage: lavish building and public works, the support of artists, writers, and musicians, and the funding of learned enterprises. In his pursuit of these initiatives, however, Urban more than doubled his predecessor’s apostolic debt. By the end of his reign, the heavy taxation he imposed as a result earned him the epithet Papa Gabella (Pope Tariff, or Pope Tax). After years of such taxes and crippling inflation, the Roman populace greeted his passing with a mix of relief and fury, captured in one complaint, They have sucked the blood out of our veins to enrich themselves, their relatives and their followers.¹⁴

Our included not only the Roman populace, but also rival noble families and other princes of the church holding grudges against Urban and his family. Urban’s successor,